


Skeleton in the Closet

by TheFandomLesbian



Series: Spencer's Criminal Minds One-Shots [1]
Category: Criminal Minds (US TV)
Genre: Angst, Comedy, F/M, Gen, Pre-Relationship, but it could easily be interpreted as pre-relationship, do you want them to be besties or secret lovers? you decide, hotchniss, i wrote this with the intention of it being platonic, so i am leaving it up to the audience
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-27
Updated: 2020-09-27
Packaged: 2021-03-07 20:28:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 12,826
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26673673
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheFandomLesbian/pseuds/TheFandomLesbian
Summary: When trying to break into her mother's house to swipe some cash, Emily has an encounter with the new security guard. In her attempt to escape, she knocks an intact human skeleton out of the closet of a room they both were instructed never to enter. Together, she and Aaron must try to solve the mystery: Who is the skeleton in the closet? What killed them? Who put them there? And why?
Relationships: Aaron Hotchner/Emily Prentiss, Emily Prentiss & Aaron Hotchner
Series: Spencer's Criminal Minds One-Shots [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1940851
Comments: 6
Kudos: 18





	Skeleton in the Closet

**Author's Note:**

> For @thestrawberrygirl on Tumblr, prompt request: "Don't go in that room. Ever."

“While you were busy judging others, you left your closet open and all your skeletons fell out.” -Anonymous 

…

A sequence of events had led up to this, Emily Prentiss realized as she hoisted herself up into the second story window of her old bedroom of her mother’s house.

First, her girlfriend had broken up with her and kicked her out.

Second, she’d burned all of her money on a hotel room before she found an apartment.

Third, she’d flunked out of a class at Yale and needed to retake it, and that meant paying tuition out of pocket because her scholarship didn’t cover retaking classes she had failed. 

Emily was very, very poor. And her mother had told her quite plainly not to expect any more financial help, not to come poking around here again until she straightened up her act and brought home “a nice man” (that wasn’t going to happen) with her degree. Which meant Emily was stuck between a rock and a hard place, or more specifically, she was stuck on the gutter of her mother’s house because she knew her mother wasn’t home and that meant she could sneak into her old bedroom and dig into the stash of cash she always kept under the floorboards in her closet. 

As she rolled into the floor with a loud, unceremonious tumble, she lay there on the floor, gasping for breath and clutching her side. “Good lord have mercy.” Whatever had happened to the key to the front door they used to keep stashed under the air conditioner?  _ Well, I’m going out the front door, and I don’t care if anyone notices it’s unlocked. _ It was her cash, anyway. 

Emily stumbled to her feet and closed the window behind her. She walked across the bedroom floor and opened the creaking closet door. She tore up the loose floorboard, and as she tossed it, it clattered to the floor alongside some of the embarrassing things she’d worn in high school.  _ Aha. _ The wad of cash—a few hundred dollars, enough to either make rent this month or cover tuition for her class. She’d decide what to do with it when she got that far—

“Hello? Is anyone there?” Emily leapt to her feet at the sound of the male voice, whirling around to face the sound, which echoed down the hallway. “Security! I heard you! Come out!” 

“Shit,” Emily hissed to herself. She whipped around. Her bedroom didn’t have a door—her mother had removed it when she was fifteen, citing she had no right to privacy—and she had nowhere to hide. She stuffed the cash into her back pocket and went for the window. 

_ Jammed. _ “Fuck.” 

“Hello? Security!”

_ I have to run for it. _ Emily darted to the door frame and peered out. The man hadn’t rounded the corner yet, but his shadow crept along the wall.  _ Now’s my chance. _ She scurried down the hall, eyes fixing on the nearest door.

She had never entered this room before.

It was strange for her to say that, given that she’d lived in this house off and on (when they weren’t traveling) since she was a baby. But the most vivid memory of this room was her mother looking at her, stern as ever, enunciating, “Don’t go in that room. Ever.” 

The door swung open with ease. She closed it behind herself. Dust clouded the room. She waved at the air to try to force it to settle, looking for a hiding place— _ There, the closet. _ The room was mostly furniture covered in heavy drapes and cardboard boxes, nowhere to hide, but the closet—

“I saw you! Come out!’

Emily flung the closet door open and pressed herself inside, closing it quietly behind her in the hopes that the man wouldn’t hear it. She sank all the way back against the wall. Through the slats in the door, dusty light glittered, illuminating the coats and items around her only partially. Emily waited with bated breath, watching as the door to the room swung open, the man cautiously entering as he surveyed it. “Hello? I saw you come in here. I know you’re in here!” Emily narrowed her eyes at him, but with the dust on the air and the thin slat, she couldn’t make out too many details. 

She leaned forward, and as she did so, something behind her tilted forward, pressing against her shoulder. She shrugged at it. It bounced, but it did not fall. She turned her head. 

In the dim light, Emily made out the outline of a human skull, resting there against her shoulder, teeth gaping open in some monstrous perpetual smile. 

“Jesus fucking Christ!” Emily flung herself from the closet and jumped at the man. The skull tumbled out behind her, and following it—the entire skeleton. The security guard dropped his flashlight and caught her with both hands in surprise. “Oh my god, it’s a body! It’s a dead body! It’s a—”

“ _ Who are you? _ ” he demanded, seeming to come to his senses

Emily bristled. “Who are  _ you? _ ”

“You’re the one who just dropped a dead body out of the closet, and I asked first!”

“You think  _ I  _ put that there! I was just trying to hide from  _ you! _ What are you doing here, anyway?” 

“I—I—” The man, Emily realized, was not much of a man at all, more of a boy, certainly no older than her—nineteen, twenty at the oldest. “I take it you must be Emily.” She widened her eyes, blinking up at him. “Your mother hired me to hang out here while she was on vacation to make sure you didn’t come here.”

Emily snorted. “Well, you really botched that one, didn’t you?” He scowled. He had a rather ferocious scowl. She backed off and crossed her arms, looking at his nametag. “So…  _ Aaron. _ The skeleton was in the closet when I went in there. That leads me to believe that someone else put it there. Wouldn’t you agree?” She arched an eyebrow at him pointedly.

He swelled in response. “No! Ambassador Prentiss told me not to come into this room. You can’t seriously think I planted a skeleton in your mother’s closet.”

“ _ You  _ can’t seriously think I dragged a skeleton up the gutter onto the second story and stuck it in here.”

Aaron hesitated, licking his lips, looking down at the assortment of bones where they had landed on the floor. “I don’t,” he decided finally. “It’s—clearly pretty decomposed. It must’ve been dead awhile.” He tilted his head to look at the bones. They had scattered themselves out. He licked his lips, mouth partially open, admiring them in a quizzical way, the way a student regarded a text before a test. 

Emily did not regard it with so much interest. She kept a healthy distance from the bones and crossed her arms. “So if  _ I  _ didn’t put it there, and  _ you _ didn’t put it there… who did?” He looked back at her and shrugged. “I’ve never been in this room before,” she purported. “Mother always said I wasn’t allowed. I never cared enough to find out. Maybe I should’ve.” 

“You think  _ she _ put the body here?” Aaron asked.

“I’m twenty-one years old, and she’s owned this house longer than I’ve been alive. Who else would’ve done it?”

“I dunno. A maid? A butler? Your father? It seems heavy-handed for us to start making allegations. We don’t have any evidence.”

Emily snorted. “Evidence?” she repeated incredulously. “Okay, Fred Jones, let’s split up and look for clues!” Her face turned in disgust, and she tiptoed closer to the bones. She poked at the long leg bone, the femur, with the toe of her shoe. It rolled a little and then settled back as she had found it. The person was, indeed, quite dead, and a dead person couldn’t hurt her. She bent over and picked up the long bone. 

Aaron stiffened. “What are you doing? You can’t move this stuff around!” Emily looked back at him with a frown upon her face. “Okay, look—here’s what we’re going to do. I’m going to go downstairs and call the police. They’ll send out a detective to do an investigation, and we can explain what happened—”

“Whoa, whoa, whoa, you can’t be serious! You can’t call the police on my mom! She’s your boss!”

“Okay, so I’ll call  _ her _ and explain what happened—”

“Pssh.” 

Aaron glowered at her. “ _ What? _ ”

Emily arched an eyebrow at him. “My mother presumably is paying you a damn pretty penny to do a single job. That job is to keep me, the person who is currently standing in front of you in this house,  _ out _ of this house. Not only that, but we  _ both _ have proceeded to enter the room we were told not to enter, and  _ then _ we knocked an intact skeleton out of the closet of the room we were told not to enter… So your plan is to  _ call her _ and tell her that you fucked up literally every facet of your assigned duty?” 

His Adam’s apple bobbed as he swallowed hard. “Well—” His voice was thinner now. “What else do you suggest we do?” 

Emily shrugged. “My recommendation would be for us to pick up these bones, shove them back in the closet, close this door so it looks like we were never in here, and you let me out the front door and lock it after me and pretend I was never here.”

He ogled at her, his mouth hanging open. “I’m not going to lie to my boss! I need this job for future references!” 

“Future references? You really think highly of yourself, don’t you? What are you studying, liberal arts?”

He bristled. “For your information, I’m in law school.” 

Emily narrowed her eyes. “You?” She looked him up and down again, appraising him, as if to note his worth. She found it hard to think of him as a man—tall, but hadn’t quite grown into himself yet, like a teenage basketball player. “How old  _ are _ you?” He didn’t look old enough to be in law school. Emily would know. She’d slept with a handful of law school students. 

“I’m twenty.”

“How’d you wing that?”

“I graduated at sixteen and got the hell out of Manassas— _ what _ are we going to do?”

Emily tossed her hands in the air. “I gave you the best possible end to this scenario. We put the skeleton back in the closet and close the room up tight, and then I leave and you pretend I was never here. I don’t think that sounds all that difficult.”

“We can’t  _ do _ that. Your life may be headed for the gutter—” Emily scowled at him. “—but I intend to make something of myself. What if I’m applying for a job at the FBI one day and they do a background check on me and realize I once hid a dead body?”

She choked on her own derision. “Please, FBI? What the hell would you want to work for the FBI for?” Aaron shrugged. “Face it, chump, you’re going to be spending the rest of your life deciding the fines of repeat offenders in traffic court.” 

“And I’m sure I’ll see you before the stand, if your reputation is any indication.” Emily rolled her eyes and walked past him. He scampered after her. “Wait, wait, wait—where are you going? You can’t leave! This is a crime scene!” 

“Look, buddy, it’s been a crime scene for a hell of a lot longer than we’ve known about it. I wash my hands of it. I’m meeting a hookup in two hours, and I need to take a shower and change clothes.”

He bridled. “If you leave, I’ll call your mother and tell her you were here and spilled the skeleton all over the floor.”

“Try me.” 

“She’ll have you arrested, and then traffic court will be the least of your problems. Disturbing the unmarked resting place of a corpse is a third degree felony in Washington. Fleeing a crime scene, misdemeanor or felony depending on the mercy of the court—again, this is a dead body, so I'm leaning toward felony. Trespassing is a misdemeanor. Breaking and entering of a private residence is a count of first degree burglary, also a felony punishable by a minimum of five years in prison—”  _ He really is in law school, _ Emily realized, a little dumbstruck. “—so there’s nothing you can reasonably hope to gain by leaving now.” 

Emily glowered at him, putting her hands on her hips. She wasn’t afraid of some guy who knew a lot about the law. So he went to class. Big deal. She went to class, too, sometimes. “What the hell do you want from me? What do you expect me to do?  _ All _ I can help you do is hide this dead body. Which, by the way, if a complete stranger offered to help  _ me _ hide a body, I’d be pretty flattered.” 

Aaron glanced back down at the bones where they had rolled away from one another. “I don’t know,” he said quietly, and for the first time, a shadow crossed his face—something Emily couldn’t quite identify. Fear, maybe? Apprehension? Uncertainty? He wanted her to believe he had a plan here and intended to execute it, but— _ Maybe he just doesn’t want to be left alone in a house with a dead person. _ Emily supposed she could understand that. It didn’t make her want to stick around, but she  _ could _ understand it. He cleared his throat. “Okay. I think we need to figure out who this is.”

Emily stared at him like he’d grown a second head. “You’re kidding.”

He shook his head. “No. I think there’s a dead person in your mother’s home who clearly was decomposing here for awhile, and we owe it to them to discover their identity and find out what happened to them and give them—give them, you know, a proper burial.” 

Pinching the bridge of her nose, Emily looked up at the ceiling of this dusty room.  _ I’m definitely not making it to that hookup this afternoon. _ It was only a bit of a letdown; the girl was usually pretty disappointing in bed. “How do you suggest we do that?” 

He frowned. “Well… We start with people you know of who went missing in the last twenty years, acquaintances of your mother, maybe people she has beef with.”

“She’s a career politician. The list of people she  _ doesn’t _ have beef with would be shorter,” Emily deadpanned. 

He ignored her. “Browse missing persons reports, records of homeownership, any public record of strife on your mother’s account. We can look for clues as to cause of death, and once we have a good idea as to their identity, we can arrange a funeral service.”

“How are we going to arrange a funeral service? We can’t just drop off a box of bones at a funeral home. They’re going to ask questions.” Aaron didn’t meet her eyes, nibbling thoughtfully on one of his fingernails. “Besides, it’s  _ bones. _ What clues do you think we’ll find for cause of death? This isn’t archeology class. C’mon, dude, this guy—or girl—they’ve been here for years. There’s no reason to get our panties in a twist over it now.” 

“What if it were you? Wouldn’t you want someone to find out what happened to you and put you to rest?” 

_ Ah, an inexorable sense of justice. _ Emily supposed that would probably make him a good lawyer in the future, but it made him a pain in the ass in the present. “I wouldn’t care. I’d be dead and decomposed.”

He scoffed. “What if your mother were missing? Wouldn’t you want to know what happened to her?”

“Only to ensure she was definitely dead so I could get my inheritance.” 

His jaw dropped in horror. “Are you—Are you  _ normal?  _ Do you have a soul? There’s a dead person on the floor—isn’t that affecting you at all? Do you care about  _ anything _ other than stealing a wad of cash and making it to your five o’clock booty call?”

This stung. Emily wasn’t sure  _ why. _ She didn’t know this guy from eve and didn’t owe him a damn thing. But his rebuke stung like he had slapped her in the face. Maybe because recently she hadn’t known anything but rejection, so finding comradery with anyone, no matter how brief—that was new and exciting. “Look, pal—”

“My name is  _ Aaron. _ ”

She set her jaw. “Okay, fine,  _ Aaron. _ I’m not here to steal  _ anything. _ This money is mine. I earned it myself, and I was hiding it under the floorboards in my bedroom because my mother used to steal every dime I made and stick it into an account she promises she’ll let me access when I meet her ridiculous expectations. I grew up living in a fishbowl and now I’m only looking out for number one because if I don’t, nobody else is going to. I’m not a thief. I’m trying to make rent by reclaiming what’s mine.” 

Aaron crossed his arms and tilted his head back thoughtfully. He looked sad in a way—not pity, but something else, something like recognition, she supposed, like he  _ knew _ her. “If we find out your mother was deliberately hiding a body in her home, you’ll become the arbiter of her estate when she’s imprisoned. Not to mention the amount of money you’ll accrue for solving a cold case crime.”

“You really want my help, don’t you?”

“I certainly wouldn’t mind it.” 

_ This is really gonna suck. _ “Fine,” she acquiesced. 

…

A sequence of events had led to this, too, Emily realized as she bumped heads with Aaron over the microfiche in the public library, both trying to get a good look at the article pulled up on the screen. She didn’t care to review those events, though. It was too fresh. 

“Why are you still here? I told you to get on the computer. It’ll be faster for us to split up. Just open up Archie on the web. Most of these files have been digitized by now.”

He regarded her with incredulity. “The computer? I don’t know how to work one of those things.”

“What, they don’t have computers at Harvard or wherever it is pompous asses go to get law degrees?” 

He rolled his eyes. “George Washington University. And the computers are for the science and mathematics departments. I don’t even know how to turn one on.” Emily stared at him, waiting for him to laugh at the joke, and he didn’t, and she realized he was serious. 

“Sounds about like Yale,” she muttered.

“I think it applies to almost every university in the country that  _ has _ computers.”

“Fine. Do you know how to work the microfiche, or would it be more effective for you to stand back and do nothing while I clone myself?”

He gave her a mild glare—his glower was becoming less potent the longer she was around him, she noted. “Did anyone ever tell you you’ll catch more flies with honey? You don’t have to be so abrasive. You may not have realized it, but I’m on your team here.”

Emily gestured vaguely. “You catch more flies with honey, sure, but nobody ever told me how to catch people who stick bodies in closets for years, so I’ll stick with being caustic until the verdict’s out on that, yeah?” 

She set up at one of the public access computers with her notepad and her pen and opened up Archie. Unlike Aaron, Emily had a fair amount of experience navigating the world of computers. It came with having a very rich mother whose funding often backed new innovations in technology; she had free access to up and coming inventions and got to try things out as they arose. Aaron had never touched a computer before?

She knew a handful of people who attended George Washington University. It was a private school. Most of the attendees, like the ones at Yale, were born with the silver spoon in their mouths. Aaron had graduated high school early and made it into George Washington University without knowing about computer technology? He was exceptional, whatever he was.  _ Maybe he is headed for higher places than traffic court. _ Emilye wouldn’t tell him that, though. She wouldn’t want to make him arrogant. 

Hours passed at the library of searching for missing persons reports and cross referencing with her address and names she recognized as acquaintances of her mother. Occasionally, she glanced over her shoulder to see Aaron frantically scribbling away as he took notes over the microfiche.

Emily had a list of names: Rosemary Parks, Adelaide Winterfall, Georgia Denny, Harriet Bayer. All women who weren’t on public record in the last ten years, as far as she could tell.  _ This would be a lot easier if I could call Mother and ask her about these people. _ But then again, she wondered if she would get truthful answers in return. If her mother had something to hide, Emily had no doubt she’d lie. Politicians were excellent liars. 

She searched obituaries. Rosemary Parks and Adelaide Winterfall were both dead. Harriet Bayer had married—Harriet Free now—and moved out of state. 

“Hey, Emily, check this out.” Aaron approached with the notes he had taken. “Georgia Denny—you found that name?”

“Yeah—she’s been missing since 1974. I remember attending the memorial service at church when she was presumed dead.”

“Yeah, that’s what’s interesting about it. C’mon, look at the microfiche.” Emily closed out the computer and followed him to the microfiche. “This is the article where she went missing. November nineteenth. ‘Searches are ongoing for missing DC teenager, Georgia Denny, last seen at the corner of Oak Crest Court and Pinehurst Drive two days ago where she was walking on her way to her employer’s house. Ambassador Elizabeth Prentiss reported her missing two hours later when she never showed for her shift.’ And then, here, November twenty-second. ‘Ambassador Prentiss hosts a memorial service at the Waterfront Church in DC for the missing teenager, Georgia Denny, last seen November seventeenth and now presumed dead as search efforts have proven fruitless.’”

Emily blinked  _ hard. _ “She was gone eight days. Why would they presume her dead after eight days?  _ I’ve _ been missing for more than eight days before. She doesn’t even get concerned!” 

Aaron narrowed his eyes at her. “That doesn’t seem healthy.” She opened her mouth to snap back at him, but he shook her off. “There’s more. Look at this picture of her.” Aaron pointed at the microfiche. “She was pregnant.”

“ _ Very _ pregnant,” Emily echoed, looking at the image of the teenager. “This is crazy. What bone would my mom have to pick with an unwed, pregnant seventeen year old girl who cleaned our house to try to make some extra cash? She wasn’t exactly what you’d call a political enemy. Not the type of person I’d expect to wind up dead in my mother’s closet, by any means.” Aaron went quiet, wearing a thoughtful expression but not speaking upon it, staring down at the page of the microfiche. Emily nudged him pointedly. “Penny for your thoughts, Thurgood Marshall?” 

He licked his lips. “What year did your father leave?”

Emily’s eyes narrowed. “Er—1974. August or September. Why?” 

“And according to this interview with your mother here, Georgia had worked for your family for a little more than a year.”

“Yeah, I don’t see how that’s— _ Oh. _ ” Emily’s stomach dropped into the soles of her feet. “You think maybe he…?” She looked up at Aaron for clarification, and the sombre expression on his face told her everything she needed to know. “Oh, dear god.” There was a dead body in her mother’s house. There was the dead body of a teenage girl in her mother’s house. There was the dead body of a pregnant unwed teenage girl in her mother’s house who had had sex with, or worse, been raped by her father—

“There is one problem, though.”

She swallowed hard, careful to keep her face impartial. “What’s that?” 

Aaron glanced from the microfiche to her eyes. “There’s only one skeleton. She was almost nine months pregnant.”

“There should be two,” Emily realized aloud. 

…

As the sun set over the horizon, Emily and Aaron were once again in the dimly lit, dusty room, poking over the bones scattered on the floor. The orange sunlight filtered in through the window, casting only slight illumination over the remains. “It’s about to get dark in here.” Aaron stood abruptly. “I’ll be right back.”

“Where are you going?” Emily called after him. 

“To change the lightbulb.”

“She’ll notice we changed the lightbulb. She probably knows the old one is burnt out.”

“Then I’ll change it back before she comes home.”

He reentered the room and pulled the drape off of the nearest chair and stood on it to reach up to the ceiling and unscrew the old, dusty lightbulb, replacing it. As it screwed into place, it sparked, and he flinched. The old bulb fumbled from his hand and shattered on the floor. Emily scampered away from the glass shards. “You okay up there?” she called up to Aaron. 

His face blanched whiter than ivory. He dropped from the chair onto the floor. “S-Sorry.” A slight stammer punctuated his voice. Emily pursed her lips, eyebrows knitting together in concern. Aaron sank onto his hands and knees and then, painstakingly with his hands, began to pick up the shattered pieces of glass one by one—

Emily scooted close to him. “Aaron, what are you—” As she reached for him, he cowered away from her hand. His palm landed on the glass. He hissed in pain. “Hey, be careful—relax!” He regarded her like a frightened horse with a white ring of terror around his eyes. “We have a broom and dustpan. You don’t have to pick it up with your hands. Chill, it’s just an old lightbulb. I don’t think my mom’s going to sue you for damages.” 

His Adam’s apple bobbed. He blinked, and then he looked around the room, acclimating himself to his surroundings, like he’d gone somewhere else for awhile and suddenly reappeared here. He licked his lips. “Right,” he said quietly. He glanced down at his bleeding palm, almost surprised in the way he examined it. 

Emily stood. He cringed at her movement. “Hey—Hey, calm down.” She stopped where she stood, hovering above him. “I’m not going to hurt you,” she said, slowly, carefully, to him. He blinked up at her. “Let me look at your hand. I’m going to touch you. I’m not going to hurt you.” 

She wrapped her hand around his wrist and gently tugged on it until he stood up. “C’mon.” She led him to the bathroom, flicking on the light, much brighter here than in the other room. She turned on the water and ran it over the cuts in his palm, flicking out the glass shards as they surfaced with her fingernails—sure, there was probably a more hygienic way to do it, but Emily didn’t know very much about first aid, and she didn’t think Aaron would benefit from her dragging him to the hospital with the way he already shook under her touch. “You alright?” 

He swallowed again, audibly this time. “Y-Yeah,” he said shakily. “Fine.”  _ I don’t believe you. _

Emily cleaned the wounds with soap and water in silence, since talking to him didn’t seem to be helping. She patted his hand dry and wrapped it up in gauze, taping it in place. “That okay?” He nodded, not making eye contact with her. She bit her lip. “Aaron? Anybody home?” 

His eyes darted to her face. “Yeah. Yeah, I’m fine, I’m—Sorry. Yeah.” 

She shifted her jaw. “Why don’t you go downstairs and order us a pizza or something? Since we’re going to be here burning the midnight oil.”  _ Maybe being around the dead girl is wigging him out. _ His expression was a million miles away. He flexed his hand and nodded, complacent and obedient for the first time. Emily swept up the glass and discarded it, and then she finished screwing the new lightbulb into place. She left the door open and headed downstairs to join Aaron. 

His complexion had returned to normal, and he sat on the sofa, reviewing his notes and nibbling on the end of his pen. “Pizza will be here in twenty minutes.” 

“Cool. Thanks.” Emily sat across from him in the oversize chair. “What are your working theories?”

He glanced up at her. “Well—we have a body, but I’d have to do measurements of certain bones to determine definitively if it were a female… But given the circumstantial evidence we’ve accumulated, I don’t think it would be too much of a reach to go in with the assumption that this was Georgia Denny. It would be easier if we had some cause of death, though, something we could determine from examining the skeleton—”

“And we need to find out where the baby is, because it’s not in the closet with the rest of her.” 

“Right.” 

Emily crossed her legs, tilting her head thoughtfully. “There’s every possibility my father ended up with it, if it were… you know. I don’t have any way to contact him. We haven’t heard from him in more than ten years.” That ship had sailed a long time ago. “There was never a baby around here. I’d remember that.” 

Aaron twiddled with the end of his pen. “Maybe it just got discarded somewhere else. Buried, maybe, or thrown in a dump. A lot easier to do that with an infant than it is with an adult.”

“But then whoever took her either cut her open to get it out or waited for her to go into labor and  _ then _ went on to kill the baby anyway?”

“Maybe it was stillborn.” 

Emily shook her head. “I don’t know. It doesn’t sound right to me. I think we need to get back on the microfiche and look up hospital admissions from this time, see if any infants without mothers line up over the days Georgia was missing.” 

Aaron nodded. “We should do that.” He was hesitant, but Emily could see something else in his eyes. 

“What’s up? You’ve got a thought going on.”

“You won’t like it.”

“Try me.” 

“I think we should rope in an expert.” Emily grimaced. “No cops—just hear me out. My anthropology professor, Dr. Greenland, he’s really into this kind of thing, forensic anthropology and archaeology. He’s helped in the reconstructions of skeletons for a bunch of cold cases and assisted in the investigation of the Freeway Phantom.”

“Yeah, but nobody ever caught the Freeway Phantom,” Emily said dubiously. “Who’s to say this guy won’t just turn us in? He’s worked with the police before. He won’t want to jeopardize his rapport with them.”

Aaron shook his head, holding up a hand. “No, he won’t turn us in. He was pretty upset the last time he worked a case because they haven’t been crediting his work. The detective has been taking all of the acclaim. He’d be chomping at the bit to solve another case singlehandedly, and we’ve got a good reference point. What do you think?”

The doorbell rang. “I got it.” Emily bounced up from her seat on the couch and reached into her back pocket, taking out her wad of cash and paying the driver. “Thanks.” She tipped him generously.  _ And there goes part of my rent… _ Well, she hadn’t planned on finding a dead body in her mother’s house and inadvertently befriending her junior security guard, so the circumstances had changed. She carried the pizza into the living room. “So what makes you think this Greenland guy would willingly follow you into this house under the guise of looking at a dead body? Seems pretty naive to me.”

“That’s the part you’re not going to like.”

“I haven’t liked any of it so far,” Emily reminded him.

Aaron rolled his eyes. “Well… Dr. Greenland has a thing for sleeping with girls in the undergraduate programs in exchange for admitting them into graduate school.” Emily’s eyes widened. “I don’t mean you should sleep with him!”

“I should hope not!”

“But if you, say, flirted with him a little bit and brought him here, he’d follow you, and then if you  _ happened _ to show him the dead body on the floor—”

“I’m not flirting with some old pervert to try to—to effectively  _ kidnap _ him into identifying a body for me. Are you insane? Do you have a brain? Are there just bees buzzing around in your head?”

“Yes, and right now, the bees want to know what happened to Georgia Denny! Something happened to her and her baby, and they deserve justice, and we might be the only ones who ever try to give it to them.” Emily buried her face in her hands. “You can’t tell me you’ve  _ never _ flirted with someone to get what you wanted.”

She threw her heads up incredulously. “Yeah, I flirt to get sex regularly. I’m not in the habit of prostituting myself for information or for clout. Are  _ you? _ ” Aaron looked away and shrugged. “Didn’t think so.”

“Don’t you want to know what happened?”

Emily picked up a piece of pizza, and so did Aaron. “I want to know what happened to her as much as you do. I’m just not willing to compromise my values to do it.”

“Values? Didn’t know you had those.” Emily narrowed her eyes at him, but he innocently picked up his slice of pizza. She rolled her eyes, prepared to let the remark lie instead of clapping back at him, but he met her again. “Just think of it as going undercover!”

Emily scoffed. “This is not  _ Miami Vice _ , and I’m not doing it.” 

Aaron sighed. “Fine, fine. I could try to seduce him, but I don’t think it would have nearly the same effect.”

“I can’t imagine you trying to seduce a boulder on a deserted island.” 

“Well, some people have game, and some people care about becoming successful attorneys. But if you wanted to put your practice to good use and help us out, you  _ could _ flirt with Dr. Greenland and—”

“You’re not going to let this go, are you?”

“I wasn’t planning on it, no.” 

Emily wiped her fingers off on her napkins. “Fine. I’ll do it.”  _ Ugh. _ She didn’t want to. But Aaron was right—something had happened to that girl and her child, and they owed it to her to try to figure it out in some way. They owed her a proper burial, and more than that, Emily wanted to see her parents answer for their sins.  _ I always knew there was something dirty about them. _ That was how politics worked. Politicians either left when the corruption disgusted them or they allowed it to corrupt them. Her parents had opted for the latter, watching themselves become the villain. 

“Really?”

“You’re surprised?”

“You just seem more stubborn than that.”

“Well… you’re right.” Aaron munched on his slice of pizza as he sat across from her. “She does deserve answers. And a proper burial, and a marked grave. And frankly, I… I always kind of felt like my mother was into some sketchy shit, but it seemed better for me not to get involved.”

He nodded slowly. “You didn’t seem particularly alarmed to find a skeleton in your mother’s closet,” he observed.

“I always knew she kept them in there. I guess I just always figured they were metaphorical rather than literal.” He cracked a smile, and they continued to eat in silence. 

…

Emily lay in her old bed in her pajamas, staring up at the plaster ceiling, the way the patterns dappled up there to form constellations.  _ I need to get some sleep. _ Falling asleep here would be difficult. The body of a dead teenage girl whose baby had been stolen from her was just two walls away. When Emily closed her eyes, she saw the image of that girl’s photograph behind her eyes. Her lower lip trembled, eyes burning.  _ She kept her baby. _

Her stomach did a sick flip, and she shoved away those thoughts and flipped onto her belly, burying her face into her pillow. She didn’t think about that, didn’t talk about that, didn’t have anything to do with that, and it didn’t matter now, it  _ didn’t matter _ —

Footsteps. Emily sat upright and turned on the lamp. Slow, methodical footsteps.  _ Now we’re being haunted. Fanfuckingtastic.  _ Didn’t the ghost girl know she and Aaron were trying to  _ solve _ this mystery?  _ We’re the wrong people to be mad at, Georgia! We want to help you! _ Emily didn’t know how to communicate that without a ouija board. 

The sound of bare feet striking the wood just outside her bedroom door continued, pacing back and forth, back and forth, back and forth.  _ Does Aaron hear it?  _ Emily’s heart leapt into her throat. She swung her legs over the side of the bed and stood up. If Aaron heard it, would he run? Would he come upstairs to check on her? She’d left him downstairs where he said he’d sleep on the couch—he could easily bolt.  _ He wouldn’t do that. He wouldn’t leave me. _

The certainty with which she felt it echoed to her very bones, shocking her.  _ Besides, he’s working security. He’d be a bad security guard if he ran away from danger, that’s all.  _

She couldn’t shake the first staunch thought, though. 

Carefully, Emily wrapped her hand around the handle of the door and swung it open. It creaked a low moan. She peered into the hallway where the footsteps had echoed and locked eyes with Aaron. “Jesus Christ! You scared me to death.”

He blinked as the lamplight bathed him. “Sorry, I—I couldn’t sleep. I didn’t mean to disturb you.” He ran his hands through his tousled hair. 

Emily inclined her eyebrows. “I can’t sleep either,” she confessed. 

“Can I tell you something that sounds a little crazy?”

“Dude, everything that has happened since I decided to climb the gutter into this house has been fucking nuts. You can’t tell me anything that will surprise me at this point.”

He gave a considerate nod. “That checks out.” He glanced back at the closed door of the room where the bones rested. “I keep imagining that she gets up and kills you in your sleep while I’m downstairs, none the wiser.” Emily chuckled in spite of herself. “Hey, you said you wouldn’t think it was crazy.”

“I don’t think it’s crazy. I was just listening to footsteps outside my door and wondering if you were going to run for the hills or come to my rescue when you heard me scream as the ghost girl devoured my soul.”

He raised his eyebrows. “So I think it’s fair to say we’ve both watched  _ Halloween _ too many times.”

“For me, it was  _ A Nightmare on Elm Street. _ But yes, I think—” Something echoed from the other room. Aaron jumped sky high and whirled around, backing up toward her. “Did you hear that—”

“Yeah, it was real?”

It echoed again. Emily grabbed Aaron by the back of his nightshirt and dragged him into her room, slamming the door and locking it. “Okay—” Emily gave a shaky laugh. “There’s got to be a rational explanation. It’s probably just one of the overgrown tree limbs scraping against the front of the house, right?” Aaron stared at the locked door, clutching Emily’s wrist—she realized that now, that at some point he’d grabbed hold of her and hadn’t let go. “ _ Right? _ ” she asked again pointedly. 

“Uh-huh, right, definitely a—” The sound repeated itself a third time, and this time, he grabbed her and pushed her behind him, gulping audibly. “Definitely a rational, logical explanation that doesn’t have anything to do with the dead body two doors down—”

“That body has been here for  _ years, _ Aaron, I’m sure it’s fine, I’m sure…” Emily’s hands were shaking. “I’m sure I don’t want you going anywhere for the rest of the night.” 

“Oh, thank god,” Aaron breathed. Emily tucked herself back into bed. “Er—do you want me to stay on the floor?”

“Buddy, if you’re brave enough to go down to the hall closet and get out all the extra blankets, be my guest.” 

Aaron shook his head. “I’m not.” 

Emily folded the blankets down. “Then come on.” He dove under the blankets beside her. “You didn’t strike me as the scaredy cat kind,” she remarked as he curled up like a turtle into its shell trying to protect itself. “You were really brave coming up here to stop me when I was breaking in.”

“You were a person,” Aaron breathed. “I can beat up a person. It’s a  _ ghost! _ What am I supposed to do against a ghost?” 

Emily shrugged. “I dunno. Pray? Use a ouija board to summon a bigger ghost to kill the first one?”

“Exactly! You’re helpless against ghosts.”

“So you believe in ghosts?”

“I didn’t until about ten minutes ago.” 

Emily chuckled. “Fair enough.” 

Aaron was quiet for a moment, but Emily could hear his heavy, frightened breathing and feel the tremble of his body against the mattress, and she knew he was still awake. “Do you believe in ghosts?” he asked in return. In the lamplight, Emily looked over at him, surprised at the juvenile expression upon his face, his black eyes all round like saucers. 

Did Emily believe in ghosts?  _ Sort of. _ “I think ghosts live inside of us,” she whispered. He waited for her to clarify. “I think they come to the surface when we’re vulnerable, or we’re stressed, or something reminds us of a time when we weren’t as strong as we are now… but they’re always there, inside us, waiting to come to the surface. Like when you dropped that lightbulb.”

He looked away and didn’t answer.  _ Maybe I shouldn’t have brought it up. _ Emily was a politician’s daughter. She was good at reading people—that came with the nature of being involved in politics and living in a fishbowl as a child. She  _ knew _ something had come to life in Aaron that he preferred to keep below the surface.  _ But what is it? _ demanded her morbid curiosity. 

At his silence, she said, “I don’t want you to tell me anything.”

“I wasn’t going to.”

A staunch refusal. That was fine. “If it makes you feel any better,” Emily said as she rolled onto her tummy so she could sleep, “this has brought up some ghosts for me, too.” 

“Has it?” Aaron asked faintly. 

“Mhm.” 

His voice had begun to thicken up in sleep, and maybe that was why he became more talkative now—either trying to fight sleep, or the sleepiness impairing his judgment. “Maybe if you tell me about one of your ghosts, I can tell you about one of mine.” 

_ Huh. _ He was timid in the way he proposed it, like he almost didn’t want to, but his tired eyes met hers, and it occurred to Emily that, for whatever ridiculous reason, she trusted this guy. That was saying something, because Emily didn’t trust men—ever. Aaron had earned her trust through this comradery forged by a rotting skeleton in her mother’s house, and for that reason, she agreed, “Okay… I think I can do that.” He watched her as she spoke, riveted on her face, but she didn’t look at him. The scrutiny made her uncomfortable. “I… I moved around a lot,” she started, “when I was a kid. The nature of being a politician’s daughter, I guess, it’s like—it’s like living in a zoo, everything you do is scrutinized, and all I wanted was to fit in, which was hard, because we never stayed in one place for too long.”

She paused, licking her lips thoughtfully. “So, when I was fourteen, I—there was this girl I liked. We were in Denmark at that time, and she was, like—the child of some duke, part of the royal family. And we were, you know, kissing like a couple of dumb fourteen-year-olds who don’t really know what kissing is supposed to be like. We were behind this curtain at this party. I guess that’s part of being young, feeling indomitable. And we were, all the way up until her dad noticed our feet under the curtain and ripped it open.”

She cleared her throat. “He—He grabbed me away from her and threw me on the floor and started—started throwing things at me. Antique vases, the types of things they keep in castles. There was glass and ceramic pieces everywhere. I got all cut up trying to get away from him. He was bitching and yelling in Danish, calling me a couple different slurs, how could I do this, who did I think I was—you get the idea.” Aaron nodded, encouraging her along. “And when my mother came, she—well, to her credit, she  _ did _ claim me as hers and pick me up off the floor. And then she spent the next two months yelling at me because I destroyed her reputation in Denmark and soiled the poor girl and cost the United States government millions in replacing the antiques he destroyed in his fit of rage. All because I wanted to be a normal teenager with a girl I liked.” 

It wasn’t the story at the forefront of her mind tonight—the  _ other thing _ was, the thing she didn’t talk about and didn’t  _ think about _ so why was she thinking about it right now—but it was something personal she hadn’t shared with anyone except her ex-girlfriends, so she thought that made it pretty special. 

“I’m sorry,” Aaron said softly, but he didn’t look at her with pity—instead, like before, his eyes held nothing but understanding. She wondered what things he had endured to give him that understanding. “You didn’t deserve to be treated that way.”

“I know.” Years ago, Emily hadn’t known, but she did know, now. “Thank you,” she said, a little quieter. “It’s your turn now.” 

“Right.” Aaron averted his eyes. “I, uh… I don’t know.” He licked his lips. “My father—he was really, um, uptight about messes, and valuables.” Aaron wasn’t looking at her anymore. “And if you—if you broke something, you had to clean it up the way he told you to, as a punishment. Usually we had to, uh, pick things up with our fingers. Glass, if we shattered it, or ceramics.” 

_ That was why. _

Aaron had dropped to his knees beside the shattered lightbulb and had painstakingly begun to pick up the shards one by one.

“And he’d, uh, he’d stand behind or beside you with a belt and whip you if you didn’t do it fast enough.” He’d flinched when Emily reached for him. “And he’d pour dry rice under your knees and make you kneel on it if you took too long, and then you’d have to clean up the rice, too.” 

Suddenly, Emily’s upbringing didn’t seem all that terrible. 

“I dunno,” Aaron said again, and Emily didn’t know what he was referring to—he did know, clearly, as he was speaking about these things. “I guess I got in the habit of owning up to everything, because Sean, my little brother—he’s a lot younger than me, and I didn’t think that was fair to him, to have to deal with that stuff. So I pushed our bed up against the wall and always put him on the inside so if somebody grabbed at him, they’d take me first—and if he broke things, I’d say it was my fault. And I did that until they sent me to boarding school.” His brow furrowed thoughtfully. “And then… Sean would call all the time, and I—I never answered the phone. Because I didn’t want to know what he was going through at home, when I couldn’t do anything to help him. I still don’t answer when he calls… but he doesn’t try much anymore.” He looked up at Emily. “I guess maybe what I’m saying is I’m not as brave as you think I am.” 

“Aaron,” Emily said very quietly, “the men of my echelon are not… typically, not very good people. But you are kinder and braver and gentler than the whole fucking rotten bunch of them.” The wrinkle between his brows relaxed, and a slight blush tinged his cheeks. “You know that thing people say about a couple of bad apples?”

“Yeah.” 

“Well… to me, it’s never been a handful of bad apples in a good batch. It’s always been a whole corrupt, debauched batch in a corrupt barrel built by bad barrel-makers. So when I say you’re a good apple, I mean it. Don’t let the bad ones spoil you.” 

He looked away. “That’s very kind of you to say, Emily. Thank you.”

“Anytime.” Emily sighed. “Maybe I should go into motivational speaking, since it looks like I’m gonna flunk out of Yale. Isn’t that what people who flunk out of university do? Tell other people how not to flunk?”

Aaron snorted. “I wouldn’t hold my breath for anyone to hire you as a motivational speaker, Miss Traffic Court.”

“Oh, go to hell.”

“Is that what you’re going to include in your first speech?” Aaron dug at her. 

“Maybe so. I was born with the silver spoon in my mouth. If I can’t even get out of college successfully, I doubt I’m going to amount to anything else.”

“You’re not going to fail,” Aaron said patiently. “You’re really smart. You could probably study computers. Isn’t that the big thing, now?”

Emily laughed. “Just because I know how to turn on a computer and use a search engine doesn’t mean I need to study computer technology. It just means my mom is rich enough to have the resources to teach me rudimentary tech skills.” She sighed. “We should probably sleep.”

“Mhm.”

“Do you want me to turn the lamp off?”

“ _ No. _ ” 

“Good, because I was gonna leave it on anyway.” 

…

Emily crossed her arms as they strode down one of the sidewalks of George Washington University. Emily had never been on this campus before, though she had slept with a handful of the women who attended here (she had already pressed up into Aaron’s shadow and hidden her face past a group of girls where one of them would have found her a little too familiar). “Are you sure this is going to work?” she asked dubiously.  _ I can’t believe I’m doing this. I’m going to flirt with a pervert to figure out what happened to a girl who went missing more than fifteen years ago. This isn’t crazy. This isn’t crazy at all.  _

“Yeah, I’m sure. Believe me, almost any woman who’s gotten accepted into the law school has done it.” Emily’s mouth twisted downward in distaste. “I’m not okay with that, but right now we can use it to our advantage, right?”

“I guess so,” she muttered. “As long as we figure out what happened to that girl, I can live with this.”  _ I hope. _

“And I’m not going anywhere. I’ll stay the whole time.” 

“Thanks, I’m sure you’re very willing to stop the man whose opinion dictates whether or not you graduate law school from hurting me,” Emily deadpanned. Aaron shot her a disapproving glance, but then he held the door open for her to enter a building, the title of which she hadn’t caught (though the titles didn’t matter; they’d all blend together). “Which way?” He led the way down another corridor. 

“He has office hours now and then goes home immediately after, so if you play your cards right, we should have him for the whole afternoon,” he whispered to the shell of her ear as they approached the closed office door. He knocked once, twice on the wood, and then stepped back, waiting for the door to open. 

The heavy wood swung open. “Oh! Mr. Hotchner. What a nice surprise.” Emily regarded the man before her, a short man—much shorter than Aaron, about her height—with salt and pepper hair in his fifties. “Come in, come in—who might this be?” 

“Dr. Greenland, this is my friend, Emily.” Emily smiled and tilted her head, spinning her hair around one finger.  _ Is this how women flirt with men?  _ She hadn’t done it very many times in her life. He extended a hand to her, and she took it with a quiet laugh fluttering from her lips. He locked eyes with her and carefully clasped her hand in his own rather than shaking it.  _ Oh, I’ve got him. _

Aaron was right. Charming this old fucker was easier than breathing.

“Charmed to meet you, Emily.”

“And you as well,” Emily chimed in return. 

“And to what do I owe the pleasure of your visit?”

Aaron smiled, too, relieved by the ease with which Dr. Greenland had taken the bait—the bait, of course, being Emily. “Emily is about to graduate from her undergraduate program at Yale and has a vested interest in our law program here. We’ve been working on a forensic law project together where we could use some of your expertise, so I was hoping maybe you could give us a hand?”

His grin widened like a cheshire cat. He had no idea they were leading him on. “Is that so? Well, that’s perfectly agreeable to me. Come along, both of you—I’m fascinated to hear what material you’re covering. Emily, dear, what is your field of study?” 

_ Dear. _ Emily didn’t particularly care for his tone, but she supposed she could tolerate it. As Aaron had said—they were going undercover. “Right now, I’m studying forensic psychology and criminology with a minor in translation and language analysis.” It was easier to tell a lie if part of it was true; Emily didn’t know very much about forensics, but she knew a lot about psychology and translation, so she hoped he would latch onto that. “Aaron tells me you have a penchant for French literature?”

Aaron had not, in fact, told her that, but she had spied a well-worn copy of  _ La Chartreuse de Parme _ on his bookshelf in his office alongside a handful of other French titles, some she recognized and some she didn’t. “Oh, yes, yes, I  _ am _ a lover of French literature—fiction and nonfiction. French law history is quite fascinating, if you ever get the chance to study it.” As they walked, Dr. Greenland fondled her arm like a relished antique, and Emily bit the inside of her cheek to keep from pulling away from him, shooting Aaron a baleful look. “Are you fluent?”

“Oui, je parle couramment. Enfant, j'ai passé beaucoup de temps en France et y ai fait une partie de mon éducation,” Emily said with a coy smile. The man flushed pink, and she regretted not saying  _ no, I don’t speak French, are you insane? _ and when she met Aaron’s eyes, he was too busy gawking at her to intervene. 

“Oh, joie! Le français est-il la seule langue que vous étudiez?” 

_ Anytime, Aaron. _ The man’s grubby hand was crawling higher up her bicep. “Non, à vrai dire. Ma mère est une politicienne. Nous avons beaucoup voyagé quand j'étais jeune et j'ai appris beaucoup de langues.”

“Comme c'est excitant! Qu'est-ce que tu étudies d'autre?”

Emily pointedly cleared her throat as she made eye contact with Aaron again. “I’m fluent in,” she said pointedly,  _ hoping _ the words in English would jar him into doing something, “French, Arabic, Spanish, Danish, uh…  _ Deutsch— _ ” Her mind blanked,  _ what’s the word for Deutsch in English?  _ and she tried to skip past it, but instead, it trapped her in mayhem. “—er… русский—”

Finally, Aaron came to her rescue, though she wasn’t sure if he did it to save her from the hand on her arm or the embarrassment of her own brain. The toe of his shoe caught on a crack in the sidewalk, and he stumbled. Dr. Greenland released her arm to offer him a hand. Emily took the opportunity to duck out of reach. “You alright there, Aaron?” he asked. 

“Yeah, yeah, I’m fine—”

“German,” Emily blurted, and they both looked at her. “The word for  _ Deutsch _ is German. That’s the language I know.” 

Aaron gave a nervous chuckle. “Right… right.” He cleared his throat and carefully stepped between Emily and Dr. Greenland, and she was grateful. “Anyway, uh, the project we’re working on is set up in Emily’s house—It’s only a few blocks away, if you would have time to stop by and take a look?” 

“Of course—anything.” Dr. Greenland’s eyes rested on Emily.  _ He really thinks he has a shot. _

Emily would’ve felt guilty if she hadn’t been so disgusted. 

“What’s the nature of the project?” Dr. Greenland asked. 

Aaron glanced down at Emily, making eye contact with her. He nudged her.  _ Right. I’m supposed to be the one talking to him. _ “Well, we’re…”  _ We’re trying to figure out what killed the dead girl in my mother’s house _ wouldn’t get her very far. “We’re studying stages of skeletal decomposition and trying to link together evidence that can be rendered from bones long after death.” There, that would do it. “We’re looking at revolutionizing the way forensics and law handle cold cases. That’s—That’s why we’re collaborating.” 

_ Please buy it, please buy it, please— _ “Oh, dear, that’s fascinating! I’m so intrigued to learn more about what you’re studying. Are you looking at case evidence yet?” 

“Yeah—Yeah, actually, that’s what we’d like a second opinion on. We’ve accessed some case evidence that Aaron thinks could benefit from your prowess. You are, after all, the forensic law connoisseur, as I’ve been told.” 

He gave a shaky laugh. “Aaron may be a little generous, but I have been unfairly discredited for my work of late.”

“That won’t be a problem, I assure you.”

“Now, I do hope you kids haven’t taken anything confidential into your personal homes.”

Aaron interjected, “Oh, no, of course not, nothing, um… nothing that hasn’t been around for awhile.” Emily had to chomp down on the tip of her tongue  _ hard _ to keep from laughing aloud at that. 

Aaron slipped his keyring into Emily’s backpocket as they walked—after all, it was supposed to be her house, and it would look pretty strange if Aaron unlocked the front door for her. As she approached the front step, she unlocked the door and held it open for them. Aaron entered first, and as Dr. Greenland passed, he caressed the small of her back, wrapping around to her hip and drooping lower—

“Right this way, Dr. Greenland,” Aaron called with a sharp punch to each syllable. 

His hand fell away. “Right, of course.” 

Emily sighed with relief and followed them up the stairs. “Third door on the left, around the corner,” she said to Dr. Greenland, who waited for her at the top of the stairs.  _ We’re almost done with him. _ She doubted he would want to keep fondling her ass once he realized they led him to a dead body. Or, hell, maybe it’d turn him on, but then she could use a human bone as a weapon and be a lot more intimidating. As she hit the platform, he touched the small of her back again, and she clenched her jaw  _ hard. _

Aaron opened the door and pushed his way inside. Dr. Greenland followed him. 

For a moment, he stared in silence at the arrangement of bones on the floor. Emily flicked on the light, and with it, he crouched down over the bones. “Fascinating! Did you kids make this yourselves?” Emily narrowed her eyes and exchanged a glance with Aaron.

“Er, no—what do you think the cause of death is?” Aaron asked.

“Pardon?” Dr. Greenland looked back at him. “Don’t be silly. These replicas are seldom ever made with cause of death in mind.” Emily gave an awkward cough. Dr. Greenland picked up the femur. “But this is a very lifelike rendition, I must give the creator that. I doubt someone who wasn’t a practiced expert could tell the difference. Where did you find it? Did it come from your school, Emily?” 

Emily coughed awkwardly. “Er, no—my, um, my mother found it, and we were wondering about, um, what we could do to it to make it… look… like it had been murdered.” 

“Oh. Well, that should be simple. I would just take a hammer and bash in the skull. Easy fix, blunt force trauma to the head. If you didn’t want something so obvious, crush the ribs and spinal column and maybe the pelvis, look like an MVA but was instead deliberate. Anything along those lines.” Dr. Greenland looked around the room. “Oh, look at this chair.” He stroked the velvet arm of the chair Aaron had uncovered yesterday. “This is a Fendi piece! I bet you this is worth fifty thousand dollars on the market. In pristine condition. I hope you kids didn’t sit on anything in here. If this were my room, I’d keep it locked up tight.” 

_ Oh. _ It was the furniture.

That’s why they weren’t supposed to come in here.

The plastic skeleton?

Why it was there was anyone’s guess, but it was just that: plastic. 

_ We are a couple of fucking idiots, _ Emily realized. 

“Say, Emily, dear, it’s high time I get going. Would you like to join me for a coffee or for dinner tonight?” 

“Actually, no, I don’t fuck old men who manipulate young women for trying to be successful in life. Also, your hands are sweaty, and when your temple vein bulges out, it turns purple. Go overdose on Viagra.” Aaron’s jaw dropped open, and so did Dr. Greenland’s. “Oh, sorry, would you like to hear it in another language? Geh und fick dich. Va te faire foutre. Vete a la mierda. Gå fanden selv—” Dr. Greenland turned on his heel, but Emily called after him, “Mene vittu itse! Farðu að fokka þér! Idź się pieprzyć!” She stopped when she heard the door slam downstairs.

Aaron buried his face in his hands. “You realize I need his approval to graduate law school.”

“You’re smart. You can go to law school anywhere.” Emily picked up the femur the way she had the day before and tossed it up in the air, flipping it over in her hand. She examined it under the light, and sure enough, under the bright new lightbulb, she could make out the tiny inscription in the plastic:  _ Made in China. _ “Look at that.” She tossed it to Aaron, and he looked at the inscription, too. “So… on a scale of one to ten, one being not stupid at all and ten being too stupid to wipe our own asses, how stupid were we for the past twenty-four hours?”

He sighed, lowering the plastic femur to his side. “Twelve. Twelve and a half.” 

“What makes you add the half?”

“Twelve is for thinking a toy skeleton was real and spending a whole day trying to solve the crime… The half is for us both being scared out of our pants last night and sharing a bed and sleeping with all the lights on because we thought the toy skeleton was going to eat us.”

Emily grimaced. “Oh, yeah… Let’s never talk about that again.”

“Agreed.”

Emily collected the bones. “You’re going to help me hide these in the closet now, aren’t you?” He inclined his eyebrows and helped her pick them up, stuffing them back into the closet where they had found them. “And to think, if you had done that yesterday, we both would’ve saved ourselves a lot of time.” 

“You don’t say?” 

Emily closed the closet door and took a step back to look at it. Aaron carefully tucked the cover over the chair, replacing it the way he’d found it yesterday, glancing it over to ensure it hadn’t been stained or damaged. Then, he pulled away from it and stood beside her. “Well,” Emily said, a little quieter now, “I guess I should probably go now.” Reluctance pulled inside of her, and she didn’t know why. She’d never had issues leaving anyone before. Emily knew her own rules: She didn’t trust people, she didn’t make friends, and she didn’t plant roots. She had learned the hard way that looking after herself meant closing herself to the outside. 

But Aaron was different. Aaron was kind, genuinely kind, in a way Emily didn’t know how to explain.  _ I would have been glad to call him my friend. _ “I have more classes to fail at Yale and a very rich, apparently innocent mother to disappoint.” 

She turned to the door, and Aaron followed her down the hallway to the stairs. “What—” His voice faltered. “What classes are you struggling with, exactly?” 

She looked back at him. “I tanked out of four hundred level sociology. But it was my fault. I started meeting my ex in the women’s bathroom across the hall instead of attending the lecture.”

Aaron’s eyes widened, and he licked his lips, blinking in surprise. “Well—I  _ am  _ a law student, and I know a thing or two about… you know. You could call me, if you, um, wanted… help or something.”

“Yeah, you sound like the pinnacle of intelligence right now.” He averted his eyes, a flustered blush rising to his cheeks. As much as Emily struggled to accept a proffered hand, she realized—it wasn’t easy for him to extend it, to make himself vulnerable and open to rejection. Emily wouldn’t have done it herself. She appreciated that. Softer, she added, “Thank you.” Then, because she felt particularly bold, she stood on her tiptoes and pecked him on the cheek. “I’ll see you around, Fred Jones.”

Aaron covered the place she had kissed him with his hand. “As long as it’s not in traffic court,” he mumbled, trying to hide his shame. 

Emily’s hand went to the handle of the front door. She turned it. And then she stopped. “Do you think we’ll ever know what happened to Georgia Denny?”

Aaron thought about it for a long moment. “I don’t know,” he said finally. “I hope so. Maybe someday in the future, there will be somebody smart enough to figure it out.” 

…

_ Twenty years later _

“Hey, Prentiss!” At Reid’s summoning, Emily jogged to his side where, beside Hotch, the excavated skeletons rested in uncovered graves. “Look at this.”

“Yeah, they look pretty dead to me,” Emily remarked, and Hotch and Reid both shot her dry looks. Reid picked up a shiny knife blade with his gloves and held it up to her. “Oh, that’s new. Is there one of those in every grave?” 

“We’re still checking,” Hotch said.

“Yeah,” Reid said. “We were lucky Hotch was walking around back here. If he hadn’t stumbled on them, we might not have found them. They’re too old for the dogs to pick up much of a scent.”

Emily nodded. “Say, Reid, these are definitely real skeletons, right?”

He narrowed his eyes and tilted his head in a quizzical frown. “Of course. What else would they be?”

“I’m just saying, sometimes when you think you’ve found a body, you’ve actually found a very realistic plastic skeleton.” 

Hotch set his jaw, shooting her another dark look, and she gave him an innocent smile, but before he could say anything, his phone rang, and he answered, “SSA Hotchner,” and walked away without another word to her. 

“Why would someone bury a plastic skeleton?”

Emily shrugged. “Your guess is as good as mine.” 

“Prentiss!” Hotch called. “There’s another case. You’re coming with me.”

“Listen to that, I’ve been summoned.”

“Good luck,” Reid wished her. 

Emily trotted to catch up with him. He passed her a tablet. “There’s a lead on the series of skeletons dug up in that yard on Oak Crest Court. They want us to lead the charge in interrogation.” He climbed into the Suburban, and she followed him, buckling herself in. “Review the evidence?” he asked her as he cranked the SUV. 

She opened the tablet. “I thought local PD was handling the Oak Crest Court bodies. They seemed to think it was pretty cut and dry.”

“They were. I thought one of the skeletons was of interest in the file I reviewed for Strauss, and I requested dibs in the event it became available to us.” 

“Why would you do that? You know we’re already spread too thin.” Hotch arched his brows and remained silent, and Emily pieced through the bodies—five of them, all female, all young adults.  _ Or, technically, six. _ One of the women was very pregnant at time of death. “You think this is related to Georgia Denny?” 

“Her mother and father both agreed to DNA testing. The results aren’t back yet.” Hotch’s knuckles were tight and white on the steering wheel. “But I think it’s time for us to finish what we started.” Emily nodded to him in agreement. “I want you to lead the interrogation.” 

“Of course.” 

A seventy-five year old psychopathic sadistic murderer-rapist? Emily Prentiss ate those for breakfast. 

…

“So, Fred…” Emily sat on the interrogation table, spreading her legs, sprawling her arms. The small old man shrank away from her, his face downtrodden. He had wept at some point—sorry, she supposed, that he’d been caught, more than he was sorry he had committed any crime. “You know, the more you tell me, the shorter your sentence will be.” His lower lip trembled. “Oh, sweetie, there’s no need to cry. I’m sure if you can give me a decent alibi, we can make this all go away. Can you do that?” 

“Just leave me alone… I know what you want.” 

“What is it I want, Fred?”

“Someone to blame—” He choked. “You want to put an old man in prison for the rest of his days—the real killer is still out there—or dead already—”

Emily tilted her head. “But you see, Fred, these girls, they all went missing in the late sixties through the mid-seventies… You’ve owned your house and the yard where the bodies were found since its construction in 1964. You see how that’s pretty incriminating. And your wife—”

He throttled against his handcuffs. “ _ Don’t _ you talk about my Mary Beth! I didn’t do  _ nothing _ to her! She took  _ everything _ from me, and she  _ deserved _ what she got!”

Emily pursed her lips innocently. “So what did she get, Fred, hm? Because the coroner’s report said she died of strangulation. You claimed she hanged herself, but there was never any evidence of a rope, and in fact, the autopsy report says the bruises on her neck were shaped like hands…” She slid a copy of the autopsy report across the table to him. “1966. Four years after you got married. She was your first, wasn’t she, Fred?” He cringed whenever she used his name in that patronizing tone of voice. “She was your first, and you realized when you put your hands around her neck and watched the life leave her eyes—you realized you  _ liked _ it, didn’t you?”

“ _ Shut up! _ ” He rattled his chains. “Mary Beth killed herself! She went to that back alley doctor and she killed our baby, and then she couldn’t live with the guilt and she killed herself, too!”

Emily didn’t flinch anymore. These stories didn’t hurt anymore. The memories provoked didn’t hurt anymore—they just were.

Maybe, at some point, the ghosts stopped being ghosts, and they just sank into the walls of the castle, waiting for something else to take up the haunt. 

“Is that what happened? She made you so  _ angry _ that you decided to kill her? And you  _ liked _ it. It  _ turned you on, _ and then you realized you couldn’t feel that way again unless you did it again. Right?”

“ _ They deserved it, they all deserved it! _ ” Emily drew back as he delivered the confession. “They deserved it! They were all whores! Every last one of them! I watched them! I watched them—every one of them, I watched them—give themselves away in cars, in exchange for money, watched them sneak off to that same doctor that ruined my Mary Beth and destroyed our marriage—”

Emily slid a piece of paper across the table to him. “Give me their names.”

“Go to hell.”

“I can get you a reduced sentence.”

“Reduced sentence? Reduced to what? I’ve got eight months to live, you stupid, cocksucking bitch.” Emily arched an eyebrow at him. He spat at her. The lougie spattered her blouse. Emily did not flinch. “You’re just like the rest of them.” He snatched at his bindings. “And in another universe, you were six feet under like the rest of them, and I enjoyed putting you there,  _ Agent Prentiss _ .” 

She chuckled, tilting her head back. “Well,  _ Fred, _ ” she said again in that patronizing tone, “in  _ this _ universe, I get to put you in prison for the rest of your miserable life. And I’ll enjoy putting  _ you _ there.”

The door to the interrogation room opened. “Prentiss.” 

Emily swung off of the table and followed Hotch outside the room. He had a bottle of Clorox wipes, and he wiped the spit off of her blouse. “Whoa, careful, this is an expensive blouse, don’t bleach it.”

“I’m sorry, would you rather wear human sputum for the rest of the day?” Emily rolled her eyes but remained silent. “The DNA results are back. Mr. and Mrs. Denny are here to claim their daughter’s body.” 

“Any hits on the other four victims?”

“A few. Garcia is reaching out to them now.” 

Emily followed him down the hall toward the mortuary where an elderly man and woman an older middle-aged man waited. “Agent Prentiss,” Hotch said, “this is Mr. and Mrs. Denny and Robbie Plainfield, Georgia’s boyfriend. We are so incredibly sorry for your loss.”

They were teary-eyed, each shaking her hand. “We’re so relieved to finally have answers,” sniffled the woman. “We’ve been waiting… thirty-eight years. Thirty-eight years since he took our girl.”

The coroner opened a door. “Mr. Denny? I have some papers for you to sign.” 

The elderly man looked up. “Robbie?” he asked. 

The younger man hesitated. “Oh, go ahead, dear,” shooed Mrs. Denny, “I’m fine.” He followed the elderly man into the coroner’s office to make funeral arrangements—almost forty years late. Emily’s stomach gave a sick flip. “Robbie’s been such a blessing to us… He was so happy, then. They were so in love. They were going to get married—” Emily gave her another tissue. “He didn’t rush it because of the baby. He was working to make sure she got the wedding she desired. My husband, oh, he was mad about it then… that they were going to have that baby out of wedlock. Men don’t understand, you know, how important a girl’s wedding is to her… but Robbie did.” She dabbed at her eyes. “He looked after us, all these years. Georgia was our only one, but Robbie—he stayed. Even after high school, after college, after he got married… He’s stayed with us. He’s a good man. He would’ve made Georgia very, very happy.” 

“I’m so sorry,” Emily said softly. 

“I—I already know the answer to this question, but I’m going to ask anyway… Can we see her?”

“It’s best if you don’t,” Emily recommended. “You don’t want to remember her that way.” 

“Right, dear, of course… We know it’s her. That’s all—That’s all I really want. We know, now, what happened. Georgia found her peace long ago… maybe we can find ours.” The door opened, and Mr. Denny summoned her. “Excuse me—thank you, so much, both of you, for all of your help.”

In her absence, the hallway felt silent as a dark winter’s night, nothing but Hotch’s breathing in the bright light of the precinct. 

“Are you relieved?” Hotch asked, and Emily looked at him in confusion. “Your parents didn’t do anything wrong here.”

Emily shrugged. “No, this just reassures me that I’m never going to have the great pleasure of arresting my mother for any of her crimes, though I am sure they are innumerable.” She turned on her heel. They were done here—they’d gotten the confession they needed, and she wanted to go home and change her blouse. 

“Sometimes I am surprised by the fact that you have not become less savage with age.”

“Some things don’t change. Are you still afraid of ghosts?” 

He looked thoughtful for a minute. “Only the ones in my head.” 

Emily regarded him softly. “Mine are fewer these days.”

“So are mine.” 

She wondered if he was telling the truth. 


End file.
